Edy Luke: Sweet potato pie

The fall season is in the air, and with it comes some changes in our food preferences. Comfort favorites instantly come to mind.

Desserts are usually the last selection of a meal. However, we can start thinking about dessert choices for all the fun times will soon be coming around the bend.

What about a sweet potato pie? It has a great history, and besides it's a good conversation piece.

The history of sweet potato pie goes back a long way to the African slave trade, particularly since yams were a product of Africa. They also go back to Europe, the Antebellum South and the New England colonists.

Sweet potatoes come in hundreds of varieties, and yam is a well known variety. The term yam is a derivative from a West African word ayame. The Southerners shortened the word to yam especially around the Louisiana region.

Sweet potato and yam pies have been a staple dessert in America for a long period of time. Most bakers don't even use a written recipe because the basic markings have been handed down from generation to generation. The ingredients usually consist of milk, butter, sugar, eggs, nutmeg and vanilla added to mashed sweet potatoes. Some recipes use cream, wine, rum and maple flavoring. An open pie shell is used without a top crust.

The finished baked pie can be topped with marshmallows or whipped cream. You will not have to hunt or search for a sweet potato pie recipe because the following is my recipe to you. You can also find it in my newly published cookbook "Chef Homer's Taste of Old New Orleans."

Sweet Potato Pie

1 quart yellow or red yams, cooked, skinned and mashed.

1/4 pound unsallted butter

3 eggs

2 cups white sugar

1 cup red label Karo syrup

1 tsp. nutmeg

1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. salt

1 cup heavy cream

1 flaky, unbaked pie crust

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine mashed yams with butter, eggs, sugar, syrup, nutmeg, vanilla and salt. Blend well. Add cream. Use additional if the batter is not moist enough. Mix until all ingredients are well blended. Pour contents into a pastry shell. Bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Servings: 6 to 8.

Voila - Sweet Potato Pie!

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edyflorida@ballsouth.net.

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